Penguin

Showing the kind of ethics you would expect from the owners of Author Solutions, Penguin Random House has apparently been caught out in a lie over the launch of the bestseller Girl Online from social media celebrity Zoella (a.k.a. Zoe Sugg) previously covered in Teleread. Because, as reported in The Bookseller, Zoella was a.k.a. not-the-author, and the ghostwriter who actually penned most of the words, Siobhan Curham, received no credit. And the resulting shitstorm has been enough to drive Zoella herself off the medium that made her - the internet - at least temporarily. And now, The Guardian and many other sources are simply and directly asking: "How much of Girl Online did she really write?"...

The Apple anti-trust case continues to have some interesting fallout. The EFF today issued a press release concerning Judge Denise Cote last month dismissing some charges in a related case, trumpeting that Cote had ruled that stripping DRM for fair use purposes is legal. I’ve read the 20-page opinion, and I’m not so sure. Here’s what I know. The case pertains to Abbey House, the operator of the “BooksOnBoard” e-book store. In March, 2014, Abbey House (and two other defunct e-book store operators) filed suit against Apple and the Agency Five alleging that their implementation of agency pricing...

I meant to cover this piece from The Weeklings when it popped up on The Passive Voice the other day. To my surprise, it’s reprinted on the normally rabid pro-publisher/anti-Amazon Salon Magazine this morning, so I guess I have no excuse now. In this article, J.E. Fishman traces authorial woes all the way back to the 1930s when Penguin began to flood the market with cheap paperbacks. This kicked off a paperback revolution among US publishers. Through all of this disruption no one asked authors what they thought. When it came to business, authors were...

Two different op-eds have popped up on CNN and Al Jazeera suggesting that Amazon, big bully that it is in the Hachette negotiation, needs to be taken down a peg under the Robinson-Patman Act. (If you didn’t hear a raspy voice say “I’m Patman” when I mentioned the name of that law, I’m pretty sure you did just now.) Robinson-Patman is an anti-predatory-pricing regulation that’s on the books dating back to the ‘30s, intended to prevent businesses from charging different prices in different towns to undercut local competition, or from using their size to bully suppliers into giving...

Penguin Random House UK introduced a new platform for readers in what looks like an attempt to shift the retail marketplace.
My Independent Bookstore launched on Monday for private beta testing and is available by invite-only right now. The platform will allow users to display 12 books in a virtual bookshop. They can share, review and recommend books while My Independent Bookstore will be integrated with Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
The difference between this platform and others is that Penguin Random House UK is supporting independent bookstores with this measure. People can buy books through the virtual shops through hive.co.uk, the ecommerce...

If this isn’t Rule One of self-publishing, it should be: You should never, ever, ever pay someone to publish your work for you. Full stop. End of sentence. Now, it’s fine to pay for useful services, of course. If you can afford it, it could be a good investment to pay someone to edit your work, or to design your cover art, or even to format your book for you if you don’t feel confident of your own skills in that regard. (Though I’d honestly recommend paying $40 for Scrivener and spending a few days learning...

After years in court, Penguin Books decided to stop fighting and withdraw Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History from India.
The book was challenged by a Hindu group who claimed in its lawsuit the book “denigrated Hindus and show[s] their religion in poor light."
According to the New York Times, “Penguin’s decision settled a case involving Section 295a of the Indian penal code, which outlaws acts “intended to outrage religious feelings.””
It’s disappointing to see books challenged for their thoughts. Obviously, not everyone is going to like or even appreciate books, but the idea that people are allowed to share their opinions...

Ah, the schadenfreude continues. Andrew Albanese at Publishers Weekly reports that Bob Kohn has filed his appeal of the approval of the Macmillan and Penguin e-book settlements. In the hearing a couple of weeks ago, Judge Cote suggested it was unlikely he would be found to have standing to appeal the case, since he’s not a direct party to the case. However, Kohn is clearly going to keep filing appeals until the appeals courts turn him down. Kohn’s stance is that the price-fixing conspiracy entered into by the publishers and Apple was not actually illegal, since it served to...

German ebook app developer Readmill has announced a partnership with Penguin UK to produce an ereading option that seems to want to sidestep Amazon and other ebook distributors and go direct to the consumer from the Penguin UK website.
"Now when you purchase ebooks from Penguin UK, you can send them instantly to your Readmill library. We’re honored to provide a beautiful mobile reading experience for some of the world’s most well-loved books," reads the Readmill blurb. "Look for the Send to Readmill button the next time you purchase an ebook at penguin.co.uk."
According to coverage in The Guardian, the deal applies...

Leading UK retail book chain Waterstones has proudly tweeted a picture of early Penguins via its official Twitter account, declaring: "On this day, 1935. The first ever paperback books, from @PenguinUKBooks, were published."
Only, were they? As you might expect of such an obvious and sensible idea, Allen Lane's line of Penguin Books, launched in England in 1935, were not the first paper-covered mass-market publications. In fact, they date back more than 150 years, to the days of "yellowback" publications, introduced in the 1850s to provide cheap literature to the railway-going public. Venerable publishing houses like Routledge & Sons and Ward...

As I've argued elsewhere, Penguin and other major publishing houses could be tackling the challenges of the e-book and self-publishing revolutions by asserting their own distinct creative track record—not least in classic cover designs. Never one to miss a trick, Penguin is clearly doing just that, and now, for the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Cold War classic "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" by John le Carré, is reissuing the book in a hardback facsimile of its original 1963 Victor Gollancz first edition. Now there's something that you can't fit on a Kindle.
Except ... Penguin...

Fresh from covering itself with ignominy through Author Solutions, Penguin has promised it will play nice in Europe over pricing, with an offer to the European Union to end the price-fixing practices highlighted by the recent Apple anti-trust case in the US, which the European Commission deemed acceptable last week.
"After our decision of December 2012, the commitments are now legally binding on Apple AAPL +0.57% and all five publishers including Penguin, restoring a competitive environment in the market for e-books," announced Joaquín Almunia, the European Commission vice president in charge of competition policy.
All the other publishers under investigation, Hachette Livre...